“Weather” report

This post was initially created in April – edited a month later – and then, and then… I’m feeling like I should have been miles away by now, had I continued to work; so I still need to program a mindset to be accepting of this situation of forced headache breaks etc. As well as get back on the horse with my focus keyword perhaps! (actually, sometimes a break isn’t all that bad, many things tend to work in an ebb and flow motion. Can one possibly sync the inside breaks with the outside ones?!)

I’ve been playing with a few more skies as well as the first unfinished ones I showed you earlier. Some haven’t changed all that much, just a few details added. On the first one, you can finally see what was hiding in the grass! 😉 I have a feeling I want my paintings to have a little story, not just be “decorations”. But still be fairly simple, I’m not aiming at photorealism in any way. I even feel some of these first ones are much overworked, really.

As usual I’ll show you both the fails and the ones that I’m ok with, just because.

I think perhaps the weather set have served their purpose for now, to get me going, and that’s fine, I’ll keep practising but not as a project in itself. As with most things I do, I do need a break after a while /but not bedrest!), even if I’ve obviously not suddenly become an expert cloud painter in such a short time. Perhaps I’ll make myself do another round though, just to push my “boredom barrier” a bit and not always quit at “ok”. Otoh I can just see when my heart’s not in it. What do you think? (about pushing yourself to stick with a project vs. returning to it later) I have a few more WIPs that are nearly done, then we’ll see.

If I keep postponing this update until they’re all done however, I fear I’ll be pressing Publish on my death bed!

Apart from breaks, it takes longer to complete images than I thought it would, even when I do paint all day. Especially when I have limited drying space (fixed that in the meantime), and well, some of my initial cloud ideas simply didn’t happen because I forgot what I was doing during those breaks. Ideas keep coming and you know how it is, the new ones often seem more important. Right now I just celebrate the fact that I got over the fear of beginning, some day I hope to celebrate being actually quite good at it.

What I find the most diffcult are the regular types of free floating cumulus clouds. They really, really want to become something flat and white looking like a child’s drawing! I just can’t get the shadows to work and much prefer to just doodle them like WIP#1 – only sometimes my hands get too busy and flatten them out before I can say stop! 😉

Burden

Twinkle

Lining

Chalk

Conductor

Grey Day

Tower

Splash

Walk

Flight

Dark Sun

In between drying these minis I try to finish some of my larger, older wips to a point where I feel I can let them go or have a rest, I need to see new things on the walls (which is my largest storage space). The important thing to me right now is actually keeping up a steady work routine as many days as possible. I also feel an urge to try some horses.

Yeah, right. I’m going to leave that last paragraph here as proof of what an airhead I am. I haven’t been doing anything much of any such thing. All mouth and hot air. It lasted what, two weeks? (back in April) Perhaps now that I’m over the clouds I can have a look at them – leaving them out on the walls to look at during the day is actually a really good plan for getting more ideas.

I don’t know what I’ll be doing next, there were lots of new ideas, but since it appears this painting thing is very sensitive to interruptions of time, I can’t just pick it up whenever and expect to be where I left off. It’s bloody hard work to get reignited and I so wish I didn’t have to. There’s no amount of other things I can’t/won’t do if I’ve just been throwing paint first! But it never works in reverse. Curious, huh? And if I keep pushing for a couple of days, suddenly I know exactly where to go with some of the images, so it must be the right thing to do.

Whether I’ll eventually manage to go in some less standard direction and develop a “thing” with this broken off method remains to be seen. I’m not ready to give up yet, even if I some days say that I will.

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.“ Maya Angelou

One question…….I don’t see any fails ; ) none at all.
In fact I have trouble picking a favorite …….the birds flying against the cloudy skies appeal to my mood this morning………the gnarled trees with a snowy background are so representative of the weather we were having just 6 weeks ago ……..I would like to see the thundery sky closer up……..the horse spirit……..well you get the picture it would be lovely to have a cup of tea and sit in your living room and see these in person.